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Category Archives: Home Improvement Projects

I May Be Coming Around to His Way of Thinking…

02 Jan

After spending most of my treasured day off from work peeling, scraping and scrubbing a border off my kitchen walls to make way for new paint and wallpaper I was reminded of a remark my husband has made often that goes something like “If it weren’t for women, men would be still be hunting for their dinner, cooking it over an open fire and living in a cave.”

I put the border in my kitchen nearly twenty years ago and it definitely needs some updating but after I complete the projects I always start looking at what needs it next. We extensively remodeled and added to our home when we purchased it in 1992. The time has come when many things need updating and I’m thinking a smaller home with less to do sounds pretty good.

Most days of the week we don’t use a third of our home. It has been a great home for raising our four kids but now that they are all moved out the upstairs three bedrooms and 2 bathrooms go unused. A couple of years ago we finished off a family room in the basement which doesn’t get used either. We planned well, looking forward to our empty nest years, by placing everything we would need on the first floor but having all the extra space to heat, cool and clean leaves me thinking a lot about how it could be better used.

That one room cave is sounding pretty cozy with an open campfire and no walls to scrub.

 
11 Comments

Posted by on January 2, 2012 in Home Improvement Projects

 

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Wrestling Bathtubs and Other Remodeling Moves

07 Oct

Tonight my husband and I went to help our oldest son with his latest home improvement project. He is finishing his basement into a family room, bedroom and bathroom. We are helping with the bedroom and bathroom.

On our way to his home we stopped at Home Depot to pick up some sheet rock, 2 X 4′s and a bathtub/shower combination for his bathroom. We managed to get in all in the pickup truck and secured for the last half hour to his home. He doesn’t own a pick up truck so we have hauled whatever he can’t fit in his Impala with the seats folded down. I’m amazed at what he can fit in his car.

After arriving at his home we unloaded the truck and decided it was time to tackle carrying the bathtub into the house. His home is a split level entry so we went in the front door and started down the steps to the basement. My husband was at the bottom and my son and I at the top.

We made it through the front door with the beast but soon realized that we would have to change our plan of attack so it was back outside to turn the tub a different way and then back inside to try it again. We had to lift it high over the railing and head down the stairs.

We got to the bottom and got stuck. Back up the stairs to remove the hand railing to give us more room. Did I mention that the tub was made of fiber glass and by now we were itchy and had cuts on our hands from the fiber glass? Not fun.

Before we could remove the hand railing we set the tub down on the stairs only to wedge my son’s foot into a spot under the tub that we were having difficulty removing it from. He felt a little claustrophobic. We got it out and the railing off.

Back down the stairs with the tub. At the bottom of the stairs we needed to turn the tub 45 degrees to the left. Not enough room so we had to remove the packing feet from the tub. Still not enough room. My husband had to remove two studs from the wall at the bottom of the steps and the sheet rock from those spaces to negotiate the turn. We thought we were done with demolition last weekend.

After tonight we are taking tomorrow off from home improvement to take Dad’s sailboat out of the lake for the season. There may be large quantities of wine involved after tonight’s wrestling match. Then it will be back at home improvement on Saturday and Sunday. I hope we survive and his home.

 
22 Comments

Posted by on October 7, 2011 in Family, Home Improvement Projects, Humor, Life Happens, New Challenges, Unfinished Projects

 

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My Campaign for the Return of the Outhouse and Saturday Night Baths

18 Dec

It’s Friday night and I’m exhausted.  Not from an exciting date night but from cleaning the three bathrooms in our home.  When we were building our home in 1993  we were remodeling a portion of the old cabin and adding on new space.  When we moved the existing stairway in the cabin we were left with more space upstairs that could be used for a storage closet. 

We started thinking ahead to the future when our four children would all be teenagers.  We opted for a second bathroom upstairs instead of a storage closet and one bathroom on the first floor.  What was I thinking?  I hate cleaning bathrooms.

I’m ready to lock the bathroom doors and declare them closed for business.  I want to build an outhouse in the backyard. 

Just think no more hairspray to clean off of just about every surface in the bathroom. No more toothpaste on the counters,  multiple bottles of care products from one end of the counter to the other and mirrors to clean. 

The best part of all would be no toilets or shower stalls to scrub.  If we returned to the use of outhouses, the time spent in the bathroom would be cut in half especially in the cold Minnesota winters. 

To complement my new outhouse I would install one of those old-fashioned claw foot tubs for Saturday Night baths.  It would cut in half or more the number of towels that would need to be washed and there would be only one of them to clean instead of three shower and tub combinations. 

One of the disadvantages of our bath/shower stalls is that the bathtub is not deep enough.  There is always one part or more of the body that is out of the water .  I’d like to soak up to my neck in the tub.  I think that our electric bill and propane use would go down significantly if we changed to Saturday night only baths and the quality of baths would improve.

 
9 Comments

Posted by on December 18, 2010 in Home Improvement Projects, My View

 

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The Pioneer Spirit of Creativity

30 Nov

 Jodee Luna asked me to be a feature writer at her blog http://refrainfromtheidentical.com on creativity.  This is the post I wrote for her blog.  I decided to post it here as well.

 
 

Private Pilot April 17, 2010

There are days when I feel that I was born in the wrong time period.  A true pioneer spirit imagines the possibilities that are attainable by using what you have in new and different ways.  It doesn’t need the latest gadget or craft kit to get the desired effect. 

One of my favorite TV shows growing up was Little House on the Prairie.  I realize that the show glamorized what life was like back then but the adventurous nature of those settlers that ventured out into unknown territory and used what they had to create what they needed inspires me.

My husband and I are modern day pioneers.  We like to take what we have and imagine what it could be.  In 1992 we bought a lake property near our existing home and business.  This is what it looked like when we bought it. 

People thought we were crazy when we decided to dig a foundation and have a crane lift a portion of the existing home onto the new foundation and add on to it.  We spent hours drawing our own plans and figuring out the cost of the project. The old part of the house that we were saving had no historical value but to us it was the work of a friend who built it.  Somehow we wanted to save it in our project.  The crane enabled it to happen.  This is what it looks like now. 

 

We attended an auction at a local lumberyard and bought up many supplies for our home.  We decided on color schemes, window trim, exterior finishes and windows based on what we could find and use from the auction.  We designed and built the entrance to our home.  The carpenters that helped install it just shook their heads wondering why we didn’t just make our entrance like everyone else.  We wanted something unique.

Whenever I am faced with a challenge I get creative.  A couple of years ago I wanted a headboard for our bed.  My husband didn’t want to buy a new bed because he loves our 1970’s vintage waterbed with the old big wide pine board frame.  It originally came with a bookcase headboard that I hated and the bed was just too big for our room.  By cutting off the frame of the bed that the headboard sat on I gained nearly a foot at the end of our bed to walk around.  I loved more space but wanted a headboard.  I combined my creativity and love of quilting for my own one of a kind headboard.  I painted the quilt pattern directly on my wall.

 

My latest venture in creativity is writing my blog.  Writing is not my forte and it takes work on my part to do it better each time I write.   I love taking the photos to include with each blog.  For now I take my photos with an affordable digital Nikon that was purchased for $120.00.  It allows me to take some good pictures but I want to learn how to do more which will require me to purchase a camera that can do so much more.

 

 

 

 

 

Here are some of my favorites.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Sunday Night Blues

  My pioneer spirit kicked in today thinking about the new and better camera that I would like to purchase.  It was time to get creative and find a way to purchase my new camera without having to buy it on credit.  I boxed up my flight simulator and software that my husband bought for me a couple of years ago during my flight training and put it on EBay.  I took photos of the flight simulator, wrote up the description and listed it for sale.  Five days from now I will be that much closer to my new camera. 

So many people limit their creativity, thinking it can only be achieved if you have enough time and money.  The key to creativity is work.  Trying things in new and different ways until you achieve something you like.  It’s not about whether other people like what you do but how it makes you feel.

 

 
7 Comments

Posted by on November 30, 2010 in Blogging, Home Improvement Projects, Inspiration, New Challenges, Quilting, Wordpress blogging, Writing skills

 

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And For Our Thursday Night’s Entertainment…Furnaces 101,201,301…

21 Nov

Furnaces 101 – When you turn up the temperature on the thermostat and the temperature doesn’t rise or the furnace doesn’t stay running further investigation is required.

Tuesday morning we woke up to a home that wasn’t quite warm enough.  It felt colder than usual.  We have a set back thermostat on our furnace to save energy.  We turned up the temperature but the furnace did not stay running.  It would start, then stop and we would start it again but it would not stay running.

In Minnesota in the fall, winter and spring a furnace is a necessity.  We fortunately have a small back up propane stove in our four season porch off our livingroom that will give enough heat to keep our pipes from freezing.  We turned the furnace on and realized it would not be  reliable until we figured out the problem. 

Furnaces 201-When you know you have a problem and you think you know what it is, it helps to get a second opinion to know you are on the right track.

My husband did some investigating and diagnosed what he thought was the problem.  Then he called the heating and cooling guy that installed our furnace and air conditioner 1993.  Our furnace was  nearly eighteen years old.  Somewhere in my husband’s brain he had filed the information that our high-efficiency furnace would only last 15 years and we were past that.  My husband and the heating and cooling guy talked but it didn’t look good for our furnace or pocketbook. 

They talked for a little while longer and decided that my husband should clean the thermo coupler and the repairman would stop by and have a look at the furnace while my husband was home.  My husband cleaned the part with some sandpaper and that seemed to take care of one of the problems, the starting and not staying running part.  They both had concerns about the heat exchanger in the furnace.  If it had a hole in it as they thought it could leak carbon monoxide into our home.  He told us not to use the furnace until the heat exchanger could be looked at for holes.  They ordered a new heat exchanger for the furnace not before we spent the entire day weighing our options for our furnace.

Furnaces 301 – Time to get out the checkbook and settle in for a long evening’s work.

We needed to decide just how much money we wanted to spend.  We could replace the old furnace with a new furnace to the tune of about $2200.00 plus labor to install it.  We could switch to a new type of furnace that would have an air to air heat pump.  The cost of that unit could be in the range of $7500 minus some tax credits we would receive.  The last option was to replace the bad heat exchanger.  It would be a few hours work and it was a $1200 part plus labor. 

Our furnace guy told us he thought we could get the heat exchanger replaced under warranty.  That part should last 20 years.  We opted for replacing the heat exchanger.  We paid the $1200.oo to order the part and when we return the old heat exchanger to the company we will get our money returned.  Our repair costs will just be the labor to install it or it will be free if we  do it ourselves.

Furnace with all the wires labeled with blue masking tape.

Our new heat exchanger arrived on Thursday afternoon. We took it home from our shop and started to tackle the project around 7:30pm.  As we disconnected each wire we labeled them.  We tried to keep track of the order of removal from the furnace so we could put things back together correctly.  I told my husband afterward that we should have taken some digital pictures as we taking things apart so we would remember how they went back together.  Basically all that was left in of our furnace was its shell with the air conditioning stuff on top of the case.

Three hours later my husband was bolting the cover back on the furnace and starting it up.  It works great and our house has the new house smell as the furnace runs.  Now for returning the heat exchanger.  At first we weren’t sure that there was anything wrong with it, we couldn’t find any holes until we turned it over and examined the other side.  We found three holes in the exchanger, one large hole and two smaller holes.  The exchanger was definitely bad.

Hole in the Heat Exchanger

It wasn’t the most romantic evening in the world but we spent it together in the close quarters of our furnace room doing the thing we like to do best, save money.

Back in Business...Yeah!

 
6 Comments

Posted by on November 21, 2010 in Home Improvement Projects, Life Happens, New Challenges, Uncategorized

 

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My Load is Lighter…over 400 magazines to be exact

07 Oct

I love magazines.  I love to read them cover to cover.  Some of my favorites are home improvement magazines, cooking magazines, and especially flying magazines.  I love to keep them and go back and look at the pictures for various home improvement projects that I thought some day I would like to do.  The problem was getting out of hand.  I bought those handy storage containers for storing magazines.  I thought if they were kept neatly it was okay to keep them all.  They were taking up space in closets and shelves in just about every room in my house and some in the attic and garage.

One of the websites I frequent often is a home management system called FLYlady.net.  Each month she has a goal to work on in your home to make it a more enjoyable place to live.  This month the goal is to get rid of paper clutter.  She says living in clutter robs you of your peace. 

One reference she made when she made this statement was that we all love to stay in a nice clean motel/hotel.  What is it about it that we like?  It is the fact that it is uncluttered.  That’s what I want in my home.  Uncluttered and peaceful.  I am not a hoarder like the new TV reality shows but I do have areas in my home that have been taken over by my magazines and fabric that I use for sewing. 

Tuesday morning my grandson Jack and I loaded up the truck of my car and drove to the local recycling center and dropped them off.  Oh how I was tempted when I saw the cover of several magazines and wanted to keep just this one copy or maybe two as I was putting them into the recycling bin.

Then I found myself looking at what others had put in for recycling and realized that their magazines were different from the ones I was bringing and started to pick them up and read.  I put them back and thought of my goal of a clean, peaceful, and uncluttered home.  Bringing magazines home with me did not fit into my goal.  It’s a good thing I had Jack to keep me moving. 

The next thing on my list as far as paper clutter is all of my household records.  I love office supplies so I have found ways to keep just about everything paper for our household.  If I go in my attic I could find a box that contains receipts for what I paid for fuel oil for our first home.  We haven’t lived there since 1992.  It would be interesting trivia to read but I don’t think I need them anymore. 

My goal is to work on paring down all this paper for 15 minutes a day.  That I can handle.  I’ve already begun to tackle the mail each day as it comes into the home.  I stand next to the paper shredder, recycling and trash and sort immediately.  With four adults in our home we get a lot of mail. 

I’m feeling better already about my home and the spaces that I have cleared of clutter.  Sorry Tyler that the magazines had to go,  I know your love of magazines,  but the peace is worth it.  I will always read magazines just not keep them as long as I have in the past and pass them along to others to share.

I’ll let you know of my progress at the end of the month.

 My new idea of an uncluttered, calm, and peaceful life!

 
4 Comments

Posted by on October 7, 2010 in Home Improvement Projects, Inspiration, New Challenges, Uncategorized, Unfinished Projects

 

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Money in My Pocket and Time on My Hands

19 Sep

My husband and I are avid DIYers.  We will tackle just about any home improvement project once and then decide if it will ever be done by us again.  This past spring when we were purchasing ceiling tile for our family room were we finishing we ran across some  material to keep the leaves out of your gutter called Clean Sweep Leaf Protection gutter guard.  It looked like it would do the job for us and best of all it was on sale for about 40% off so we purchased it.  This is something we are very good at, the purchasing part.  The follow through on the other hand, not so much.

Yesterday afternoon after work I decided that I should get something done around home since it is fall and winter is not far behind.  I happened to look up and see this:

I’m pretty sure after looking at the gutters and finding a plant growing in it that I didn’t get my spring job done of cleaning out the gutters.  I usually do it in the spring and then late fall so we don’t have issues with clogged gutters in the spring. 

I decided that I had better take the time to clean out the gutters as long as I had the time and it was a beautiful day to be outside.  Then I remembered the Clean Sweep Leaf Protection gutter guards we purchased and decided to check out how to install them.  First thing on the instructions is clean the gutters, so I did since it needed to be done whether or not I got the guards installed.  It took me about an hour. 

I used a car brush on the end of my garden hose, a 3M Scotch Brite pad, and my kitchen spatula to clean out the gutter.  I’m shameless about promoting 3M products since my Dad was an engineer there until he retired.  Besides I like their products.  You need to watch out for sharp screws and edges inside the gutters when you are cleaning them out.  I found a few sharp edges the hard way.

Next I got the sections of  Clean Sweep Leaf Protection gutter guard and started installing them from one end of the gutter to the other.  They have a rubber gasket on the back edge and a flange on the front end that locks onto your existing gutter.  They are very easy to install.  They friction fit into place.  Very nice!

You need to overlap the ends by a half inch and there are tabs for this.  When you come to a corner you overlap as well but you must make a miter cut for fitting them into and around the corners.  You will need to use a tin snips for cutting the aluminum. 

Once you have all the pieces in place you pre-drill the joining ends in two locations, one in front and one near the back of the tabs and then using sheet metal screws you join the ends together.

I found the best way to do this was by pre-drilling the two holes with my cordless drill and using a screwdriver to hold up the bottom piece in place until I had the holes drilled.  I had trouble with the bottom piece moving without using the screwdriver for some tension.  Then I switched out the drill bit for a nut driver the size of my sheet metal screws and still using the screwdriver to hold up the bottom piece I installed the screws.

 I worked from one end of the gutter to the other end working around the corners and installing two screws on the mitered joints of the corners as well.

I love the finished project.  What I love even more is that from this point in time and forward I no longer have gutters to clean out spring and fall.  That  means an extra two hours a year to do something else.  The entire project from start to finish took me 3 1/2 hours. 

If I consider the life expectancy of a non-smoking white female to be 80.8 years (I got this figure off the internet, of course)  that means I have gained 60 hours to do with whatever I choose provided I live for the next 30 years.  If you calculate the money part of the equation at my current rate of pay of $14.50/hour that is $870.00 I saved by completing this project.  

Whether I did the job myself each year or had to pay someone else to do it,  I am both time and money ahead having completed this project.

More time and money = more flying  :)

 
4 Comments

Posted by on September 19, 2010 in Home Improvement Projects

 

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